“You want to drive me to despair, then!” retorted the prince, wildly stamping on the floor. “It is not sufficient, then, that you let me find your husband here, you must even praise him before me! I will tell you why I was presumptuous. I was presumptuous inasmuch as I believed it to be a favor granted to me exclusively to enter this room, and you have punished me for this presumption by proving to me that this door opens to others, too, although you assured me yesterday that the contrary was the case.”
“Then you question my word?” asked Fanny.
“Oh,” he said, impetuously, “you do not question what you see with your own eyes.”
“And, inasmuch as you have satisfied yourself of my duplicity with your own eyes, as you have seen that every one is at liberty to enter this room, and as you consequently cannot take any interest in prolonging your stay here, I would advise you to leave immediately,” said Fanny, gravely.
“You show me the door? You turn me out!” exclaimed the prince, despairingly. “Oh, have mercy on me! No, do not turn away from me! Look at me, read in my face the despair filling my soul. What, you still avert your head? I beseech you just grant me one glance; only tell me by the faintest smile that you will forgive me, and I will obey your orders, I will go, even if it should be only for the purpose of dying, not here before your eyes, but outside, on the threshold of your door.”
“Ah, as if it were so easy to die!” ejaculated Fanny, turning her face toward the prince.
“You look at me—you have forgiven me, then!” exclaimed the young man, and impetuously kneeling down before her, he seized her hands and pressed them to his lips.
“Rise, sir, pray rise,” said the baroness; “consider that somebody might come in. You know now that everybody is permitted to enter this room.”
“No, no. I know that nobody is permitted to enter here!” he exclaimed, fervently; “I know that this room is a sanctuary which no uninitiated person ever entered; I know that this is the sacred cell in which your virgin heart exhaled its prayers and complaints, and which is only known to God; I know that no man’s foot ever crossed this threshold, and I remain on my knees as if before a saint, to whom I confess my sins, and whom I implore to grant me absolution. Will you forgive me?”
“I will,” she said, smilingly, bending over him; “I will, if it were only to induce you to rise from your knees. And as you now perceive and regret your mistake, I will tell you the truth. It was an accident that the baron entered this room to-day, and it was the first time, too, since we were married. Nor did he come here, as he said, in delicate self-derision, for the purpose of settling accounts with me, but in order to fulfil a promise which he gave me five years ago, and which, I confess to my shame, I had forgotten, so that, instead of expecting my husband, I permitted you to come to me.”